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Number of babies born in Japan is the lowest since records began

japantimes.co.jp

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Re: Number of babies born in Japan is the lowest since records began

#101

Post by yostrovs »

humanrebar wrote: post #90
MichaelApproved wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in the US are taxed for _not_ having babies and no one is taking to the streets over it. If you have a child, you get a tax deduction (or credit? I forget). That is effectively the same as a tax for not having a baby. Someone with a child pays less taxes than someone without.

The logic is that parents bear an outsized cost for providing an essential social good: the next generation. When we are old, we will need taxpayers to pay social security, well trained healthcare workers, emergency personnel, maintained roads, etc. Parenting is also especially expensive: child care, safety equipment, larger homes, larger vehicles, etc. Without getting in the weeds on putting a better dollar figure o…

The "next generation" saves its own money and uses it as it likes, or rather indebts itself even further than the current. It's not necessary that the next generation will lead to a greater good. And regardless, most people will have children because that's just what animals do, mostly regardless of political considerations.

Re: Number of babies born in Japan is the lowest since records began

#102

Post by saywhatnowman »

Latty wrote: post #100
sprash wrote: post #60

If the Japanese government wants to do the right thing, all it has to do is to let the population contract even further until Asset prices begin to freefall. Then everything will be affordable again for young Japanese citizens and a good longterm economic outlook for the future is the best thing you can do to stimulate birthrates. If Japan wants to screw it up, it should allow mass immigration. This way asset prices…

> the native Japanese will eventually cease to exist Uh, what? After a generation, those immigrants will have children who are Japanese. Their native home will be Japan. If your point is about ethnicity, then I don't see what the problem is. It's also ridiculous to suggest that Japanese ethnicity will cease to exist. Sure, you'd see more race mixing, but again, how is that a problem? The US still has native American…

It's very offensive to imply that the Japanese have nothing unique to offer the world other than a passport. In fact it comes off as very hateful and rude.

Japan is more than a piece of land, or a group of people who make television programs and video games for you to enjoy. They are many millions of families each with a rich history that the world would be poorer for losing. And yes, if they stop having children or they lose their island then all of that will be lost.

Denying them this is tantamount to denying their humanity.

Re: Number of babies born in Japan is the lowest since records began

#103

Post by sprash »

Latty wrote: post #100
sprash wrote: post #60

If the Japanese government wants to do the right thing, all it has to do is to let the population contract even further until Asset prices begin to freefall. Then everything will be affordable again for young Japanese citizens and a good longterm economic outlook for the future is the best thing you can do to stimulate birthrates. If Japan wants to screw it up, it should allow mass immigration. This way asset prices…

> the native Japanese will eventually cease to exist Uh, what? After a generation, those immigrants will have children who are Japanese. Their native home will be Japan. If your point is about ethnicity, then I don't see what the problem is. It's also ridiculous to suggest that Japanese ethnicity will cease to exist. Sure, you'd see more race mixing, but again, how is that a problem? The US still has native American…

> After a generation, those immigrants will have children who are Japanese. Their native home will be Japan.

Since Japanese culture/society will not accept anybody into their "inner circle" those immigrants will build parallel societies. A diaspora usually heavily connected to their original homeland and not their host. If those get really big, they will have influence in politics which again will change the face and culture of Japan forever.

This has nothing to do with racial purity. It has to do with what is in the best interest of the Japanese people.

Re: Number of babies born in Japan is the lowest since records began

#104

Post by saywhatnowman »

david-gpu wrote: post #24
sannee wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because children in Africa are not going to finance retirement of japanese elderly.

Or at least, not without very substantial immigration.

Why do you think it's okay to make African children pay for elderly Japanese and Europeans? Why do you assume they would even want that? They are not instruments born to serve your desires.

Re: Number of babies born in Japan is the lowest since records began

#105

Post by saywhatnowman »

faissaloo wrote: post #93
beerlord wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the population is decreasing in high-IQ countries, where the vast, vast majority of humanity's economic, scientific and cultural output is generated, and increasing in low-IQ countries, which are typically stricken by famine, warfare, poor human rights (particularly for women) and foreign aid reliance.

Then things will simply have to change out of necessity, it's really quite simple. You don't seriously think people in 'low-IQ countries' aren't going to develop at astounding rates once the 'high-IQ countries' are gone right? Don't forget that modern western civilization came from the dark ages and modern Islamic civilisation came from the Islamic golden age. These things are cyclical, they come and go, there's real…

> there's really no reason to be panicking.

The top comment here is a person who has had the unfortunate experience of realizing that their cultural and genetic family are at high risk of being trimmed away from the tree of life. That's a pretty serious existential dread to swallow. Have some sympathy for them.

I mean, if all of humanity were going extinct could we say something like "well, at least there's a good chance that squids will evolve sentience someday so we will live on through squidkind no reason to panic" and make you feel better about it? And if that worked, maybe we ought not to even worry about the entire solar system being wiped out since there are plenty of other solar systems (no need to be such a xenophobic solist). And if that made you feel better maybe we ought to not mind the whole galaxy being wiped out because ... and etc... etc... c:

Re: Number of babies born in Japan is the lowest since records began

#106

Post by AnthonyMouse »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #30
jmpman wrote: post #3

Do the Japanese do anything to making having children easier? Free daycare?

I don't believe monetary incentives are a good way to raise birth rates. In the end a child is massively expensive, and no government can afford to compensate parents completely. Child care is partly such a monetary incentive (being subsidize and/or enabling parents to earn more), but women will still lose out greatly by giving birth. From what I know of Japanese culture, all these factors must be even worse than in…

> I don't believe monetary incentives are a good way to raise birth rates. In the end a child is massively expensive, and no government can afford to compensate parents completely.

Transfer payments don't consume resources, they only reallocate them. If you enact a larger child tax deduction, people with children will pay lower taxes and people without children will pay correspondingly more. The result will be more consumption of childcare and childhood education and less consumption of tourism and luxury cars, but that doesn't harm the local economy -- if anything it helps it, because the things children need tend to be locally produced, rather than your citizens spending money they earned locally to vacation in the Caribbean.

The argument you would have to make is on the other side, that the economy can't afford people to spend time rearing children that they could have spent working. But at a world average level that can't possibly have been true or humans would already be extinct, and economies have much more surplus now than they had in the past. And the cost is inherently short-term, because the net work done by the average human is more than the cost of raising them, so in the long term you get much more from having a working adult than it costs to raise the child.

You also don't have to provide enough in tax incentives to cover the entire cost of the child, only enough to push enough potential parents at the margin over the threshold to raise the fertility rate to the population replacement rate. This may still be a significant amount, but nowhere near the entire cost -- and you only have to offer it during the years when the child is in the care of the parents, not for the parents' entire working life, much less the child's, by which point you're already making dividends -- the now-adult child is working and paying taxes that more than pay for the next generation.

Re: Number of babies born in Japan is the lowest since records began

#107

Post by scotty79 »

marsrover wrote: post #37

Maybe I’m missing something or not thinking it through but why not pay people to have babies based on their status? It would cause more divide between classes but I feel like the ends might justify the means. Great education and job? You get paid more to have a baby. Homeless? You get paid nothing to have a baby. Put the payment on a sliding scale. The lower the birth rate the higher the pay until you cross your desi…

If you are rich and not having a baby then I don't think bit more money will encourage you to have one.

If you want to pay people to have babies then you should pay poor people because they might be the ones not having babies because they lack money.

If you don't want poor babies then when the baby is born in poor family buy for them the best education, healthcate, toys, food and other activities and you have a good chance that you turn poor baby into rich baby and then rich adult.

If you just want to have rich folks to have more kids you should give them what they lack. Most likely time. So limit work week to 30 hours top. Make overtime paid 200% and unpaid overtime highly illegal and heavily fined. Pay people to not work for a year or more after they have a child.

I think the solution with poor parents is actually cheaper.

Re: Number of babies born in Japan is the lowest since records began

#108

Post by scotty79 »

mc32 wrote: post #76
candiodari wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one of the main impediments to having children is just having space for them. You cannot have a child in a 40m2 apartment, and more is very hard to get in so many places. Certainly not for the people usually inclined to have babies (ie. the poor). I don't know but Tokyo is probably similar.

I don’t think that’s strictly true. Flavela housing is also smallish but that doesn’t stop reproduction. It’s more a cultural thing with many other contributing factors, like economic outlook, cost of living, etc.

It's not housing. It's basically lack of time. Japanese are allowed to work almost all of their waking hours. So they do. They pretty much have to because rent is on average always as high as people can afford. Not much time for anything else.

Re: Number of babies born in Japan is the lowest since records began

#109

Post by acct1771 »

asianthrowaway wrote: post #44
marsrover wrote: post #37

Maybe I’m missing something or not thinking it through but why not pay people to have babies based on their status? It would cause more divide between classes but I feel like the ends might justify the means. Great education and job? You get paid more to have a baby. Homeless? You get paid nothing to have a baby. Put the payment on a sliding scale. The lower the birth rate the higher the pay until you cross your desi…

I'm not sure to what extent the problem is due to economics and to what extent it's due to culture. I read recently that half of single men in Japan are virgins, which is quite staggering. Lots of Japanese people seem to have simply "dropped out" of the idea of having an intimate relationship, replacing that with video games and pornography. When I lived in Japan, what struck me was how infantile and coddled the whol…

Think it's related to the nukes?

Re: Number of babies born in Japan is the lowest since records began

#110

Post by watwut »

asianthrowaway wrote: post #44
marsrover wrote: post #37

Maybe I’m missing something or not thinking it through but why not pay people to have babies based on their status? It would cause more divide between classes but I feel like the ends might justify the means. Great education and job? You get paid more to have a baby. Homeless? You get paid nothing to have a baby. Put the payment on a sliding scale. The lower the birth rate the higher the pay until you cross your desi…

I'm not sure to what extent the problem is due to economics and to what extent it's due to culture. I read recently that half of single men in Japan are virgins, which is quite staggering. Lots of Japanese people seem to have simply "dropped out" of the idea of having an intimate relationship, replacing that with video games and pornography. When I lived in Japan, what struck me was how infantile and coddled the whol…

Samurai were meant to be literally all about work with as little emotional tie to familly so that they are ready to die on command.

So you know, familly and kiss not being priority might not be shocking outcome of such culture.

That being said, why is grown man watching anime about girls something bad? Men were consuming entertainment with girls in it in many cultures ... heterosexual men don't naturally mind watching opposite sex, especially when framed cute or sexy.

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